


shadow

by poochooey



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Incest, M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-11
Updated: 2011-08-11
Packaged: 2017-10-22 12:25:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/237983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poochooey/pseuds/poochooey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carver Hawke was a Hawke brother, but he wasn't Hawke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	shadow

\---  
The woman at the Blooming Rose was beautiful. Beautiful enough for a sovereign, anyway. Maybe even two sovereigns, though Garrett had enough trouble procuring one.

The red hair curling around her shoulders and the slight freckles covering her nose reminded Carver of Peaches. The woman even sounded like her as she ran her fingers down Garrett's arm and nearly purred her appreciation. Garrett looked more pleased than a mabari with extra rations and, just like with Peaches, Carver was lost in his brother's shadow.

\--

The dwarf smiled at both of them, refugees fresh off a year of indentured servitude, but his attention was on Garrett. He turned to him for inquiries, and occasionally Garrett turned to Carver for a second opinion. Second opinions. Lot of good they did. Carver would mutter his acquiescence or snap his reservations, and Garrett would fix his attention back to the dwarf like he hadn't said anything.

\--

The cute elven girl—Merrill—was all fumbles and blushes and giggles that shook her small frame. Carver touched her arm at the Hanged Man one night, emboldened by the cheap ale. She looked back at him and smiled brightly, cheeks flushed.

Carver opened his mouth to compliment her while at the same time she cried, "Isn't Hawke just wonderful?"

Garrett was downing his weight in ale, the rest of the group giving him adoring looks. He paused in his drinking to belch and say something idiotic that had the whole table roaring in laughter.  


Hawke.

"Yes," Carver muttered, his hand retreating to clasp around his mug, the back of his tongue bitter with more than the taste of ale. "Just the most wonderful."  
Merrill had already turned away from him, her large eyes fixed on Garrett.

\--  
Garrett had more hair on his chest, his arms. A pattern of darkness wove itself into between his legs. Carver looked the other way.

"Isn't this nice?" Garrett grinned, scooping water from the frigid lake and warming it with his hands, then scooping it around his shoulders. His face was angled towards the moonlight and he grinned like they weren't escaping from Kirkwall, Carver’s life, the few people Carver called friends.

"I can think of a lot of words to call this," Carver said. "Nice didn't exactly come to mind."

"Just you and me, little brother," Garrett laughed, always laughed for no real reason. He dove into the water with a splash and Carver's hand tightened on the pommel of his sword, afraid of being heard, but also in reaction to a feeling that sat straight in the pit of his stomach.

Carver had a knack for solving his problems with swords, after all.

\--

As Garrett leaned closer, Carver realized he had a smattering of freckles on his nose. He'd never seen that before; maybe never wanted to see.

Carver also realized Garrett's lips were cracked, that the skin at the tip of his nose was peeling. He noticed the uneven space near the corner of Garrett’s mouth where a scar refused to let his beard grow.

"There," Garrett said, pulling tight on a knot of dirty cloth wrapped around Carver's upper arm, "that should help the bleeding for a little while." He sat back, wiping his hands with the new tear on his robe.

Carver grunted; he was above apologies when it came to his brother. The whole thing was his damn fault anyways.

\--

The bandits left Garrett with a cut as long as Carver's forearm that ran across his thigh. Garrett joked about infection and cutting his leg off until he collapsed on the road to the next inn.

"You're a bloody idiot," Carver choked, holding Garrett's head up as he struggled to get him back on his feet. His fingers threaded through his brother's hair and held on so tight Garrett gasped and gave him a look of pained disapproval.

Then he smiled in a way Carver had never seen before, not directed at him anyway. It was like the smile he gave the woman at the Rose, like the smile he had given the healer, a curved smirk that hid any inkling of discomfort.

He moved his face upwards, and Carver kept his eyes open until all he saw was amber and freckles, until all he felt was his brother's soft tongue.

\--

Carver always asked why, and how come, and other various questions that usually resulted in his mother and then his brother giving him weary looks. Bethany never gave him looks like that. They were never so tired.

Garrett was looking at him like that now, and Carver rubbed the raised welt along his neck where the armor had chafed against his skin, and bit his swollen lips.

\--

They took Garrett in the middle of the night. The room they shared at a local inn was destroyed, the bed posts broken in sharp jagged edges, stained with blood.

Carver tried. He did. But they hadn't recognized him. They wanted Hawke. After all this, they had still taken him for a lackey. They assumed the flaming sword on his armor was stolen and they left him for dead. Carver let himself cry as he lay within the shadows of the room, because nobody would see it anyway.

The innkeeper was an old woman experienced with medicine. She said, more than hinted, that a mage, an apostate, had taught her. She knew about Garrett, knew the staff on his back wasn't a walking stick, probably even knew that after dinner every night, Carver fucked his brother into the bedsheets until Garrett's voice became hoarse from pleasure, composure as tangled as his hair.

She wrapped Carver's wounds with cloth turned stiff, and the herbs she gave Carver numbed the pain, but she had no freckles, no amber in her eyes, none of father on her voice.


End file.
